Regenerative medicine may be health care’s “saving grace”
According to Forbes, the answer to rising health care costs, ailments of an increasing elderly population and many incurable diseases may have been found in regenerative medicine. As one of the most rapidly evolving biomedical industries worldwide, regenerative medicine has changed the field indefinitely.
A cure for life-threatening diseases
More than half of the regenerative medicine market is comprised of cell therapies, most of them in the stem cell therapy discipline. Therapies in the emerging field have already proven capable of curing, or significantly bettering the course of, a disease once thought to be life-threatening. Furthermore, when stem cell therapy is combined with gene and immune therapy there is an even greater probability of curing diseases, reported Forbes.
"This revolutionary combination of regenerative cell and gene therapy is opening a new age of medicine that could forever change how medicine is practiced," said Janes Andrews, Ph.D., senior consultant at Frost & Sullivan's Transformational Health, in an early November press release.
According to a July 2015 press release, the Frost & Sullivan company already saw stem cell therapy as the redefining method for regenerative medicine. Using the body's own adult stem cells, stem cell therapy heals or replaces damaged tissue. Currently the therapies are mainly used in orthopedics but the health company predicted a growing trend as stem cell therapies for cancer and other diseases complete their clinical trials.
Advances in care for older populations
The market for regenerative medicine is being driven by the increasing number of elderly people in the world today. Within 15 years, 19 percent of the U.S. population will be over the age of 65, according to Forbes. Health care systems are feeling the weight of medical expenses such as knee and hip replacements, arthritis and other ailments associated with the aging population. From 1991 to 2010, the number of knee replacements covered by Medicare rose more than 162 percent each year, according to Healthline.
However, regenerative medicine may help to reduce the costs of procedures and care for the elderly population. Thanks to the success of stem cell therapies that use the body's own adult stem cells to repair damaged tissue, nonsurgical and noninvasive therapies are now alternatives to costly joint replacements. If the thousands of people who experience arthritis each year were to opt for the stem cell therapy approach, they would be saving money and receiving a better alternative. According to researchers, the field of regenerative medicine is only expected to grow and produce even more beneficial outcomes.
